


I had been lost to you, Sunlight

by eqana



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alina calling out Aleksander on his bullshit, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bickering over the little palace breakfast menu, F/M, Female Friendship, He’s grumpy she’s grumpy everyone’s grumpy, Slow Burn, Someone please get him a therapist, a what if alina was captured after trying to kill them both scenario, because it’s high time SOMEONE does, because that’s kinda canon, bickering over what colour alina should wear, genya did NOT sign up for this, honestly just a lot of bickering, horse thievery, incessant bickering over who has ownership of the bedroom, picks up right after the end of siege and storm, she tried to kill him but he’s kinda into it, slightly less problematic power dynamics, someone hug her pls, sun queen alina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:26:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eqana/pseuds/eqana
Summary: Alina is captured and brought to the Little Palace after nearly destroying the Darkling along with herself that night in the chapel. There, she is forced to play the part of Sol Koroleva, and rule at his side to keep the common people who worship her in line.Meanwhile, she plots to kill him, he tries desperately to not find that kind of attractive.
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Comments: 7
Kudos: 84





	I had been lost to you, Sunlight

My vision swam as I woke, but the parched feeling in my mouth pushed me to drag my protesting body to a vaguely upright position and reach for the glass of water on my bedside. 

The first few swallows hurt, but I drank greedily, clumsy shaking hands spilling half the water down the front of my nightgown and onto the black silk sheets of my bed, I it would soon dry.

I went to curl up back under my blankets, reasoning that as none of my guards had woken me yet, I could snatch a bit more sleep before facing the prospect of morning paperwork, or having to listen to Vasily fuddle his way through another war meeting. I was always so tired these days, but just as I had quite geared myself up to the idea of a lie in, a voice interrupted.

‘Alina.’

The Darkling was sat by my bedside. Now, that in itself wasn’t unusual per se, as he had developed a rather disconcerting habit of appearing around me on a day to day basis, and had even made a point of staying through the night once or twice, but it was the fact that he was kicked back, relaxed in an armchair and studying me, the angles of his perfect face sharper, his skin lined with faint scars, the terrible, real beauty of him, that made my breath catch. 

He was here.

I watched him as he watched me react to his presence, and cursed whatever it was I had betrayed at seeing the corner of his mouth quirk up. His eyes didn’t flicker from mine as I arranged the blankets back around myself with as much dignity as I could muster, which admittedly wasn’t much in my half soaked scrap of a summer nightgown. 

‘How did you get here? I asked, trying not to wince as my voice came out in a painful rasp.

He looked at me pointedly, then flicked his gaze to the mirror behind me, the faintest amusement sparkling in his quartz eyes and on the corner of his mouth.

I turned to the mirror and started, a ghost Alina stared back, pale and bruised, with a white braid coming undone behind my back. Shock chased out the last remnant of sleep and memories of the night before rushed back. Nikolai’s dinner, the bloody battle, the chapel. 

He rose from his place in the armchair and I watched him consider me in the mirror, amusement sparkling in his quartz eyes and on the corner of his cruel mouth.

‘Alright, how did I get here?’

I felt the bed dip as he sat down. Not beside me, at the end, acalculated distance. He was sizing me up.

‘You were carried here after having made a rather impressive attempt on both of our lives. At least until one of my heartrenderers had the sense to knock you out.’ 

I remembered it. His lips on mine as I reached into him and called his power, and then merzot. Feeling him dying, both of us dying, buckling against each other in my embrace. I saw shadows jump in the corner of the room and scowled at him.

‘And my friends?’

‘Genya is here, she has been tending to you. The others, you’ll be pleased to hear, I do not know the whereabouts of. For now.’

‘You won’t touch them. Genya-‘

‘Will answer the rest of your questions. Later. You require rest and I have a country to run.’ 

With an abruptness akin to that of dismissing a particularly irritating child, the Darkling swept up towards the door. I glared after him and he turned his gaze to match mine as he lay an elegant hand on the bone handle, unperturbed. 

‘Do not try and leave these rooms, the guards have better things to do than chase you down all morning. I will see you for dinner.’

He shut the door with a click just as I hurled my water glass across the room at him. It did not help the situation in the slightest, and missed by a rather embarrassing margin, but made a very satisfying sound as it smashed against the doorframe, Ravka’s finest crystal raining down onto the hardwood floors. 

I felt myself exhale, despite his threat, despite being back in his clutches, despite not quite believing my friends were safe, despite being terrified and furious and feeling like I’d been trampled by one of Vasily’s enormous horses, I was....alive. I could work with alive. I would rather be working with a dead Darkling, but smashing that glass had made me feel the slightest bit better.

I took a deep breath and called the light to me, illuminating the familiar hexagonal room and sparkling off the broken crystal. The sheets on the bed hadn’t been changed since I’d last slept in them, my hairbrush still lay on the vanity, and my worn brown boots lay where I’d kicked them off before putting on a finer silk pair for Nikolai’s dinner. I had made his space my own, I thought a little smugly, before noticing a heavy black kefta draped over the armchair he had occupied. 

I slid out of bed, maintaining a soft glow of light as I padded over to it. I ran a hand lightly over the fabric, noticing bloodstains down the front, dried to dark brown. They looked older than a day. I took a morbid moment to consider who had gotten close enough to him to bleed all over his chest before being hit by the uncomfortable realisation that some of it had come from the both of us in the chapel. How long had he left it here for me to find? Was he trying to intimidate me with it? I scrunched up my nose and dumped it unceremoniously on the floor behind the chair. It was petty, but like smashing the glass, it made me feel better, I didn’t want it in my room, and I certainly didn’t want to look at it. The hexagonal chamber may have been the Darkling’s once, but it has become the closest thing to personal space of my own that I had in the Little Palace I was at a loathe to rescind my claim to it. I’d been here for months, and any of personal items it might have once contained had been cleared out by the King at first wind of his betrayal. 

I surveyed the room, but the now crumpled kefta and broken glass were now the only indications things weren’t as they had been before. With a dejected sigh I slipped back under my damp sheets and drifted off to sleep.

I awake, somewhat less hazily, to a knock at the door. It still takes me a moment to remember everything has changed, but then I have to get up and hurry to throw a housecoat over my nightgown and smooth my unruly white hair. 

‘Enter.’ 

My voice doesn’t waver despite my rising unease. In the mirror I still resemble a sickly ghost, but I stand with my back straight and I summon a soft glow around me, and think that Nikolai would be proud. I have held authority within these walls, and I refuse to let the simple matter of being knocked out and dragged back by the Darkling take that way from me.

All these thoughts evaporate at seeing who stood in the doorway. I am running to her, a choked sob forming in the back of my throat even before I tread upon broken glass to embrace her. The breakfast cart she wheels in is discarded as Genya holds on to me just as fiercely, and for several minutes we are silent and still but for the tears we cry into each others hair. 

‘Alina, you’re barefoot in broken glass, here-‘ 

‘I don’t care, I’m so-‘

She pulls back, an amber eye filled with tears as she quickly turns her ruined socket away. She led me out of the broken glass, fussing and chiding me as I leave bloody footprints in my wake. We sit on the edge of the bed, tears flowing freely between us, and don’t say anything for a while, and she braids my messy hair.

She shoots a dark look at the rumpled bedsheets, and takes both my hands. She meets my eyes, soft and solemn.

‘He hasn’t touched you....has he? He ensured me he wouldn’t. It was me who cleaned you up after he brought you back, dressed you-‘ she is holding me so tight, and I am overcome with affection, and protectiveness of her. I squeeze her hands back. 

‘No, he hasn’t, he....maintained a distance between us.’ 

The intensity didn’t leave her as she held my gaze. ‘We’ll get him for this, you and I. For what he’s done to us.’ Her eye gleamed ‘He is old and thinks himself clever, but do you know what?’ 

‘What?’ I felt a smile grow, and saw her own face light up, just a little bit, before she presses a kiss to my forehead.

‘He is still a man, and if there is one thing that can be counted on in this world Alina, it is that men will underestimate young women.’

Genya was no longer beautiful, but as a smile stretched her ruined lips and her remaining eye sparkled, I realised how she always had been so much more. A little girl broken and remade into a weapon, a weapon who had chosen to fire at the hand who had created her. 

I thought of the chapel, feeling the Darkling’s life bleed from my lips. I thought of the calculated distance as he sat apart from me on my bed. I thought of a rather impressive attempt on his life. 

I say ‘Third time lucky?’


End file.
